


Fruits

by taispeantas_laethuil



Series: Forbidden Though The Words May Be [2]
Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Politics, Revolution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-13 00:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15352098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taispeantas_laethuil/pseuds/taispeantas_laethuil
Summary: The road to revolution never did run smooth.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a time, it really does seem like it will be that simple.

His opportunity to discuss the Plan first comes up a few weeks later, on the night they discover that Brighton is the Voice is the Archjustice. Volfred has known of the latter connection since his very first experience with the Rites, just after he’d opened the Book for the first time; but he’s the only Reader, and therefore the only one who hears the Voice. No one had so much as guessed the former until Volfred had caught sight of some old sketches Oralech had done, as a kind of tutorial for stitching together the sort of wounds inflicted by Howlers. The marks are distinctive, and the face all too familiar, for all that he’d only seen it the one time.

“That bastard,” Erisa hisses. “That fucking fucker- FUCK!” Enraged beyond any hope of coherence, she leaves the blackwagon in three long strides, grabbing an axe as she goes. Volfred winces as the sound of green wood being chopped floats inside after her. Ti’zo rouses himself from the back of Volfred’s chair, and perches on the windowsill to keep watch over her.

 “He did say that he was going on to a position of great power,” Oralech tells him, rubbing at his temples. The early signs of incoming horns are not yet visible, but Volfred knows that a touch would reveal the presence of something hard beneath the surface of the skin. It might take years for them to burst out- or it might take months. “Of course, he said a lot of things, especially towards the end.”

 Volfred gets up to make tea. They can spare the fuel- they’ve been stocking up, in anticipation of the climate of Mount Alodiel, and he strongly suspects they’ll have more still once Erisa has worked out her temper. They’ve just restocked on willow bark as well, which will help with Oralech’s doubtlessly encroaching headache. The motions will give the other man space to speak as well, should he wish it.

 Volfred has set the kettle to boil by the time he does. “He told us it was written in the Book. I don’t suppose that’s accurate.”

 “I-” Before he has the opportunity to get his reply out, he feels it: the little tingle that lets him know that if he opened the Book now, there would be more information, more pages, than there had been before. “-strongly suspect I’ll be able to answer that better in a moment.”

 “You know, he used to jump like that, and never explain why,” Oralech says, waving in the direction of the Book. “I just thought it was the horns getting to him.”

 “It’s an admittedly disconcerting sensation,” Volfred tells him, getting up to retrieve it. “Though not quite as disconcerting as reading a book from cover to cover and knowing that there will be more information in it later.” There’s an entire chapter still missing, he believes. He hasn’t read a single word from Underking Ores, but the others make frequent references to his work. Perhaps today is the day when he’ll meet the Wyrm Scribe at last.

 No such luck. It’s another page from the Saint, another dream of the Commonwealth that never quite had the chance to be before falling to corruption. Another page meant to be full of hope, turned sour by experience.

  _On Legacy_ , it’s called. Volfred reads it three times before the kettle begins to whistle. He gets up, to fuss with the tea blend: willow bark is bitter, and Oralech prefers the taste to be blended with something similar, rather than masked by something sweet. Ginger, for example, and some chamomile.

 “That bad?” Oralech asks when it becomes obvious that he’s being a bit too generous with the tea.

 “Not as such,” Volfred replies, finally pouring the water and setting the mug aside to steep. “Apparently, Readers are always appointed to the highest positions of leadership.”

 Oralech is silent for a moment. Outside, Erisa continues to chop.

 “Well,” he says finally, as Volfred brings him his tea. He holds the mug up as though in toast. “Here’s to you, Archjustice Androbeles X.”

 “Ha!” Volfred is more shocked by the idea than amused. “They should be so lucky.”

 “Or so desperate,” Oralech points out. “He wasn’t an easy man to work with. I doubt power has made him any easier.”

 “No,” Volfred replies, thinking of the day of his exile, when he was sure that he was going to be killed, and the Archjustice’s mind had tried to breach his own. “It hasn’t.”

 Oralech sips his tea. Erisa continues to chop. Volfred continues to think about the Plan, sketchy though the details are at the moment. He’s going to have to breach the subject soon. They have perhaps another day’s grace, before they have to head to the Glade of Lu again, and then they will most likely continue north to Mount Alodiel for his first-ever Liberation Rite.

 Erisa’s tree goes down with an almighty crash that rattles everything in the blackwagon not nailed down and a few things that are.

 “I take it from the lack of screaming that she didn’t bring it down upon herself?” Oralech asks Ti’zo.

 <<She’s well,>> Ti’zo replies. <<I think she might even be calming down.>>

 “THERE ARE FUCKING NUTS OUT HERE!” Erisa shouts.

 Thankfully, the fucking turns out to be metaphorical, and the nuts that had been hidden in the crown of the tree Erisa has downed are not. They’re oily and tasted of lard, but they are food, and after an hour’s caution after the first taste, it seems as though they are food they can eat without undue distress. Volfred sets to roasting some in the probably vain hope that it will make them taste better; Oralech gets the large mortar and pedestal they use for food under the logic that grinding it to paste and then spreading it on traveller’s cakes couldn’t make either option _less_ palatable. Beyond them, Ti’zo sorts through the nuts, looking for signs of insect infestation- they can’t afford to waste the food in either case, but they aren’t presently in need of food enough to torture themselves needlessly, and the imps are a great deal more enthusiastic about eating insects than the rest of them. Erisa is farther still as she chops the tree into fire-sized logs, though not out of sight- the stars in the Downside shine as brightly as the moon during the Rites. Her voice carries, as it always does.

 “I guess we kind of knew they were going to try in shove us into respectable positions,” she says. “I sort of thought it would be something like the priesthood or some shit that doesn’t actually matter, not the fucking head of government though. Congratulations on that, by the way.”

 “I hardly think they’re going to want to offer _me_  the position,” Volfred argues.

 “Well, they didn’t want you to live either,” Erisa points out. “Shit happens.”

 “I’m not human,” Volfred reminds her. “So I don’t think it’s allowed.”

 “Who could tell under the robes and mask?” Erisa counters. “You could just be someone who was really tall.”

 “The Veiled,” Oralech says suddenly.

 Volfred turns to him, frowning. “Military leadership.”

 “Robed  and veiled, as the name implies, so no one can tell who they are,” Oralech confirms. “I just remembered- I worked with one, early on in my career. She had metal legs- I presumed they’d been amputated. It happens, a lot. But she growled sometimes. Like a cur. It never occurred to me before, but she might very well have been one.”

 “I suppose it’s possible,” Volfred says, thinking. The thought sits sourly.

 As much as he’s railed against his people’s complicity in the Commonwealth’s reign, he’s never so much as contemplated that they may have been architects of it. But if one of the things the robes of offices that come with such positions of power conceals is race…

 Archjustice Androbeles IV- the Archjustice who had outlawed reading- was said to have been an uncommonly tall man. There’s a statue of him on the campus of the University, near where Volfred’s office used to be. He’d passed it every day. If it were an accurate representation, as it claimed to be, then they were of a height.

 He could have been a Sap. He almost certainly had been a Reader, if not for the Nightwings than for another triumvirate. And then he’d gone on to outlaw literacy entirely.

 Not for the first time, he wonders: how was it that anyone had thought that was a good idea?

 “That’ll be you then,” Erisa says. “Oralech the Veiled and Archjustice Volfred. And I don’t care what they try to make of me, I’m telling them to fuck off and defecting to the Harps. So. You might want to think about retiring early. I don’t want to kill either of _you_.” She swings her axe down, too hard, sending splinters shooting out in all directions and swearing at length as one embeds itself in her hands.

 “Come over here,” Oralech says wearily.

 Erisa rolls her eyes but obeys, letting Oralech click his tongue at the injury, and waiting while he got out his medical kit. That, more than anything, speaks of how much this has shaken her. She gets angry around medical attention, for much the same reason she gets angry at most things. Oralech gets out his tweezers, and sends him a pleading look: _distract her_.

 Well, Volfred can certainly provide ample else to occupy her mind. “I think, my child, that we’re in more agreement than you might presume.”

 The silence that greets this is truly astonishing. Erisa’s jaw drops. Oralech freezes, tweezers hovering over her bleeding hand. Ti’zo jumps in the air, turns around, and squints at him. And Tariq-

 There’s a tune that Tariq often plays while they speak of the Commonwealth, which had sounded gentle and lilting at first, but after a few repetitions had quickly become cloying and insidious:

  _Nothing will change, my child, nothing ever does_

_The stars may dance but must remain in skies above_

_Everything will stay the same as it ever was_

_And you must never, ever ever doubt my love_

 He’d only ever sung the lyrics once, but they’d followed Volfred into several nightmares since. Out of sheer self-preservation, he’s stopped noticing when Tariq played it. He only notices that the minstrel has been playing it when he very abruptly stops.

"Uh- what?” Erisa says finally, after a long moment of hearing the nuts crackle over the fire. They seem done, or at least, at the point where leaving them to roast any further would be an exercise in delusion. Volfred tips the pan into the pot at Oralech’s feet and spreads out a fresh layer to be roasted. “Just- what?” Apparently, he’s managed to shock her beyond her ability to swear.    

 “Even if they were to name me the next Archjustice, what would I be able to do? I would still be answerable to the courts, and if I pressed too far I would surely grow as loathsome to them as Brighton, if not moreso. Sooner or later- and probably sooner- they’d find a replacement.”

 “You could do something, though,” Oralech points out. It’s a habit of military veterans, Volfred has noticed, to phrase delicate questions as statements.

 “Something, certainly,” Volfred agrees. “But not much. Not enough- and to keep myself in the position to do _anything_ , I would be required to make concessions. To sign off on police actions and arrests and interrogations and exiles, not to mention the war. Whatever I would manage to accomplish wouldn’t be worth those lives.”

 Perhaps the prospect of being invested with such authority should have tempted him more, but the fact that it had so clearly tempted so many of his predecessors made it unpalatable on an instinctual level.

 “I suppose you might be able to retire back to university,” Oralech says, with the clear implication that he and Erisa had no such place to fall back on.

 Volfred wouldn’t either, for that matter. “Even if I had not left my position at university a decade before my exile, I don’t think they would welcome me back.” That was the point of being branded, he’d quickly realized- not so much a punishment meted out because of the severity or violence of the crime committed, but a signal that the Commonwealth did not want them back, _ever_. Hence, he and Erisa were branded, while Oralech was spared that particular indignity. Someone- perhaps even the same someone who declared that he would get no mercy at his sentencing- had hoped he would one day find his way back. “Besides, I played at being a quiet citizen for decades- as did you, for that matter. How much did we change? How much good did it do us, in the end?”

 Oralech harrumphs in concession to his point.

 “So… are you coming after me, then? Are we all defecting to the Harps? Because that’s- I wouldn’t mind.” Coming from Erisa, that’s practically a declaration of intent to adopt them. “I mean- that could work, actually. You’ve never fought in the War, they like Oralech, they probably wouldn’t even know what Ti’zo was, if he wanted to-”

 She cuts herself off as Volfred begins to shake his head.

 “No, I don’t think we should defect to the Harps,” he says. “But neither can we let the Commonwealth continue.”

 “How would we pull that off without-”

 “Volfred,” Oralech cuts her off. “How many students do you have?”

 “I’ve been teaching people to read for almost two centuries,” Volfred points out mildly. “At this point, the question is less how many students I have, but how many students my students have, how many schools they have founded, and how many libraries they have hidden away.”

 “The numbers, Volfred,” Oralech growls.

 “In terms of literate souls engaged in insurrectionist activities? An exacting census would be impossible, but perhaps a hundred of thousand,” Volfred tells them. “The schools are equally tricky: generally they depend upon one teacher, and if anything should happen to them, that spells the end of the school. However, there are roughly a dozen schools to every library- and I know for a fact that we have one hundred and forty seven libraries.”

 “Scribes,” Oralech swears softly.

 “All the fucking Scribes in a damned orgy,” Erisa elaborates, which certainly paints a picture Volfred would rather not see.

 “There are more people who are not technically members of my movement, but are nevertheless working towards the same ends,” Volfred says. “The Eighth World religion, for example, had been driven underground a good century before I was even born, and once we discovered one another we found we made natural allies. When the trade unions were outlawed, we reached out to those of their leaders who made it through the purges. We’re not precisely the same organization, we three, but we share a common goal, and have a long history of coming to one another’s defence. There are even plenty of people who consider themselves to belong to multiple movements.”

 “And the smugglers,” Erisa says. “You’ve got the smugglers too, right?”

 “To a point. Our relationship with the smugglers is largely material, rather than moral,” Volfred says. “We provide them with business, and tip them off whenever we get wind that the constabulary might be moving against them, and in return we now have a way to communicate with and request aid from those of my agents still in the Commonwealth.”

 Oralech laughs suddenly. It’s a bitter sound.

 “Well,” he says after a moment. “I think you managed a bit more with your play at quiet citizenship than I did.”

 Oralech cannot be a strangers to conspiracies. It’s something Volfred had developed a suspicion about, back when he was editing the booklet about his exile together; a brokerage of peace was not something that could be done on a whim. It would have taken years for Oralech to build up enough credibility to be taken seriously by both sides, to say nothing of the time to develop the connections.

Now that he’s gotten to know the man, he’s not only confirmed his suspicions, but learned that his co-conspirators had been thus: two of the Veiled, who had committed suicide to avoid exile (to avoid a return to the Downside, he strongly suspected), three captains (one lost in the fall, another dead in the Sand Wastes, the third married into a nomadic clan of goatherds that lived in the prairie), and two majors (one who had joined a roving mercenary company and fallen in battle with a vampire squash near the Pit of Milithe, and the other who was now leader of said mercenary company). For the Harps’ part, General Meraki had brought three sworn wing-sisters of hers, now all exiled and still living, and a brilliant tactician. The tactician had been very young- when the Commonwealth descended upon their committee, the others conspired to give her time to escape and the grounds that she was barely beyond a fledge and deserved a chance to live. She was the only one who had evaded the Commonwealth.

 (Had one of the Veiled been Katriona? He wonders about that now. Later, he will wonder: had the tactician had been Tamitha Theyn? These, alas, are not questions that can be easily answered.)

 “I had a great deal more time than you did,” Volfred tells him. “And far less immediate mortal peril.”

“Is it enough to take on the Commonwealth, though?” Erisa asks. “I mean. We had a census, right before I was exiled. There are over a hundred million people living in the Commonwealth. A hundred of thousands isn’t all that much, in proportion.”

 “That’s true, but, tell me: how many people are actually _loyal_  to the Commonwealth? And how many merely exist, try to keep their heads down and looks after their own in the hopes of being ignored?” Volfred asks.

 “Lots,” Erisa answers cautiously, to the second question. She ignores the first.  

 “Such people aren’t likely to suddenly agitate for regime change,” Oralech points out.

 “Not on their own,” Volfred agrees. “Not while they fear. But given something bigger than that-”

 “Like what?”

 It’s Tariq who says it. Tariq, who at the time barely speaks to any of them directly, and only occasionally sings, and when he does sing, his songs have a distinctly mocking edge to them. Tariq, who has held himself so separate and aloof from the rest of them that Volfred had been conscious and mobile for several days before he’d realized that he was even there.

 Tariq, who has been with the Nightwings since the very beginning, when the Scribes still walked among the living and could pass on their hopes firsthand. Tariq, for whom Brighton is merely the latest in a long line of traveling companions to become an atrocious tyrant. Tariq, who until this moment, has had no reason to believe any of them will be any better.

 The revelations will come later. At the time, Volfred merely hears a challenge he must answer. “Like hope,” he says. “Hope that we might one day live freely, _without_ fear, if we work at it.”

 “So, what, you show up and tell people not be afraid, and you think that’ll work?” Erisa demands.

 “Not quite so simply,” Volfred replies. “Think about it, my child: we were never meant to be able to return, in the eyes of most of the Commonwealth. Even those who knew better must have been hoping that you and I would never learn the truth of it. And as for you, my dear-” he turns to Oralech, “- I think the Commonwealth was hoping that your exile would have some kind of pacifying effect. It didn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your reappearance would not go unremarked, if it were public.” He smiles, as he turns Ti’zo. “As for you my friend, I think you might have the greatest effect out of all of us.”

 <<Me?>> Ti’zo has expressed a great curiosity about life in Commonwealth. He hasn’t directly said that he wishes to go, but Volfred has gotten that impression anyway. It’s gratifying to see the expression on his face and know he was correct.

 “Yes, you,” Volfred says. “The Scribes are a story, in official Commonwealth doctrine- composites of actual historical figures and bits of folklore given an allegorical and symbolic role in its foundation. No one is meant to take the Eight Scribes literally, and consequently, many consider imps to be mythological. You’d be the first imp many in the Commonwealth would see- and your very existence would expose that lie.”

 “Yes, but- is that enough?” Erisa stresses. “Because I still think the Harps are a safer bet, when it comes to bringing the Commonwealth down.”

 “Again, we’re in more agreement than you might presume,” Volfred says. “I don’t think the four of us are enough, and I think we’re going to need the aid of at least one Harp.”

 Erisa squints at him for a moment, and then yelps when Oralech takes advantage of her continuing distraction to remove the splinter from her hand.

 “Well,” he says to Volfred as he begins to dress the wound, small though it is. “Go on then.”

 “There’s a reason the Eight Scribes have not be scrubbed from the official history books altogether,” Volfred says. Though, to be frank, even the version of events he’d learned as a child was offensively different from what was in the Book of Rites. “And that’s in their symbolic power. The Commonwealth remains very committed to _proclaiming_ that they represent everyone, and that everyone has a happy and willing place in it. That anything else- we exiles, the Harps, any Commonwealth citizen still at liberty who knows how unjust our laws have become- is an aberration. And it works, because the Scribes are long since passed from this world, and therefore cannot contradict whichever version of their doctrine is considered ‘true’ at the moment.”  He pauses, wishing for a moment that he’d thought to bring his pipe out with him. “We can contradict that narrative, and we can do that most effectively if we ourselves reflect the Scribes.”

 He’s expecting Tariq to raise some kind of concern- heresy, perhaps- but the minstrel is silent. It’s Erisa who quickly become agitated.

 “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, Volf, but you’ve got two humans here,” Erisa points out. “And I- look, no one is going to take me for the Master General, especially not while I’m next to an actual war hero. I’m pretty sure I don’t even count as a fucking Nomad anymore.” She taps her brand with two fingers of her free hand. “Only Savages kill their fathers, you know.”

 “We don’t need to limit ourselves to an exact match only,” Volfred says quickly. “It’s- when I say that we should reflect the Scribes, I don’t just mean ‘one of each’ I mean that we should reflect the country we wish to see.”

 “Which means that you should be there,” Oralech tells her.

 “Absolutely,” Volfred agrees.

 <<Who else am I going to hunt with?>> Ti’zo trills. Erisa often has difficulty making out his speech, but even she can tell that he’s in agreement with them. Whatever argument Erisa had been preparing herself to have crumbles in the face of their conviction.

 “Okay, so. We’ve got Lu, Ha’ub, Gol Golathanian, and other,” Erisa says. “I guess you want your scary witch friend to be Milithe?”

 “I’m fairly confident I can persuade Bertrude to rejoin the cause,” Volfred tells them. Actually, he’s certain of it, so long as he can phrase it as a favor she is doing him, rather than perhaps the only way he has of repaying her for the decade of freedom he enjoyed at her expense. He dislikes leaning on her feelings for him like that, but if that’s what it takes to see her liberation, he’ll do it.

 <<There are other imps in Triumvirates,>> Ti’zo points out. <<And more, travelling with various companies and clans. I can ask about potential Nightwings/revolutionaries.>>

 “I know a Harp who would hear us out, at least,” Oralech says. “Though, I don’t know that she would be willing to play Triesta.”

 As they begin to plan, Tariq begins to strum once more, a tune unlike any Volfred has heard from him yet. The song stays with them, through every Rite and every step of the Plan afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> W O W did I ever fuck up the formatting my first try at posting this.
> 
> And that's why you don't post your shit on your way out the door folks!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But, of course, true change could never be achieved without compromise.

There are two problems that face them when they finally reach the summit of Mt. Alodiel. The first is that Oralech, their Anointed, will be unable to reach any kind of agreement with the Tempers’ Anointed, General Meraki. The second-

_ Ah, I suppose it was too much to hope that you would fall off the mountain and spare us the trouble. _

-has arrived, right on time.

_ Sorry to disappoint, _ Volfred replies.  _ We all know you’re a busy man, Archjustice, we’ll try and make this quick. _

They cannot, under any circumstances, allow the Archjustice to know of their Plan, by which Volfred mainly means  _ he _ cannot allow him to know of it. The others don’t hear the Voice, and he’s tentatively hopeful that the lack of connection goes both ways. Even if that’s not the case, though, there is this: the Archjustice does not seem able to leave Volfred in peace. 

So long as his attention is on Volfred, Oralech may have time to make their offer. So long as Volfred can keep the Archjustice from learning of their Plan, they have a chance, regardless of the outcome of Oralech’s negotiations.

It’s not a small matter, when it comes to dealing with a fellow Reader- one who has  _ years _ of experience on him, and whose mind he can feel, even now, attempting to encircle his own.

He does have one advantage which the Archjustice cannot have- the Nightwings are on his side.

<<He’s here.>>

Oralech ignores him, for pre-agreed reasons Volfred dare not think of in any great detail. Erisa’s lip curls. 

<<Well tell him to fuck off, and also he can->>

_ Erisa sends her regards. _ Volfred relays serenely.

_ And her desire to murder me, I presume. _

_ I don’t believe she’s reached that point yet. _ And she hasn’t. 

<<-and  _ then _ he can hop on an unlubed cactus and->>

<<Don’t waste a cactus on him!>> Ti’zo advises.

_ Ti’zo sends his love as well. _

The Archjustice is silent for a blessed moment. Volfred spends the time watching Oralech and General Meraki talk, without ever thinking about the topic of their discussion. He won’t be off on the sidelines of this Rite, which poses unique challenges and opportunities. He’s won against the Tempers before, though he can tell they’ve gained Enlightenment aplenty since their match at the Pit of Milithe. This will be a much more difficult victory to achieve, should they even be victorious.

Oralech and General Meraki discuss things for a few moments more, before Celeste interrupts. “The night grows short,” she says firmly. “This is not a place for politics.”

Volfred cannot help his incredulity. Not the place for politics? This is, for all intents and purposes, the place where the leadership of the Commonwealth is decided. The Rites are rather inherently political.

_ You would dare to presume to know the Rites so well? _

They are relying on Volfred focus on the Rites itself to shield the Plan from the Archjustice. It’s why he will be participating in tonight’s Rite, rather than Reading. Now, with the Rite yet to begin, he’ll have to use something else. 

Erisa’s anger as familiar a friend as Erisa herself is, now. Her father is there, of course: though long dead by her hand, he always lurks somewhere in the back of her mind. Right now, however, the bulk of her ire is focused on Brighton. 

As before, he could see the shape of it, if not any specific memory: Brighton had been the only literate member of the Nightwings, and they had therefore been reliant upon him. He had used it to end arguments in his favor, more than once. He’d used it to the justify making decisions without regard to their desires, opinions, or even needs as well. 

He and Oralech had argued, ceaselessly towards the end. Erisa had threatened, and occasionally offered to kill him- and act that would have not quite been murder, and neither could quite be claimed as self-defense. He’d gotten worse, in the end: pain from incoming horns, Oralech had excused weakly, though all Erisa had been able to see was all the ways in which he might turn on them.

He sees it at once: it was no mercy of the Scribes that had seen Brighton freed. It had been a mercy Erisa and Oralech had shown to one another: they’d each given their claim to a chance for freedom, so that neither of them might be left alone with him.

Anger is Erisa’s shield. It surprisingly easy to let her emotions spark of his own, and to use them in a similar fashion.

_ You presume to talk to me about what I dare? _ Volfred replies.  _ Tell me, Your Honor- how many years were you down here? You were sprouting horns, so I presume it was more than a few. And in all the time did it never occur to you that other people suffered in ways you should alleviate? _

He’s shouting, or the mental equivalent thereof. Erisa is staring at him, as is Ti’zo. Oralech probably would be, but his face is blank and controlled as he walks back over to their sigil. The Tempers all have their masks on already, making it difficult to tell how far he’s projecting. He finds he doesn’t much care.  _ In all that time of travelling with them, knowing you had to rely on them as they relied on you in order to win your freedom, did you never consider giving a damn? _

Oralech nods at him, and takes up position in front of their sigil. Volfred… honestly wants to shout a bit more, in a way he hasn’t let himself want for decades, but the Rite will begin shortly, and Oralech’s nod means that they’ve already succeeded here, at least in part.

The celestial orb falls. Volfred focuses himself on the match, ignoring the Archjustice’s taunts and other assorted commentary all the while. 

They lose, and it looks like honest defeat, rather than a planned feint. General Meraki ascends, likely to be traded back to the Harps next time someone arranges a prisoner exchange, and so the Plan advances. 

To what degree, they will have to discuss later. Volfred shakes his head when Oralech opens his mouth, so its Erisa who speaks next. 

“You’re kind of angry underneath all the lectures, Volf, you know that right?”

“I know,” Volfred replies. “How is it that old song goes? ‘If you aren’t angry you aren’t paying attention’ or something to that effect?” He takes a breath, and reaches for a number. He’s trying to communicate just how long he’s been doing this- a number of years, to demonstrate that he’s long practiced in remaining in control of his temper- but what comes out is “2,263.” He takes another breath. The punctuation it makes helps. “That’s how many of my students they’ve exiled over the years. An additional 146 were outright murdered- executed, or died in custody, or however the official story goes. And that’s just the ones I know about with some degree of certainty. People just disappear- or are disappeared. All the time.” And the number of agents similarly lost over the years is beyond his ability to count. He has never met all of them, or even most of them. 

He takes another breath. Right, that’s right. He’s furious- has been, constantly, in some corner of his mind, for decades. For centuries. Since the Mangrove Library- no, since the eradication- no. 

No. 

Since his mother had explained the literacy ban to him. Since he’d learned that being able to read could not only result in  _ his _ exile, but that of his friends and family as well. Since he’d first heard it said that the law was a bad one, but he would almost certainly outlive it so long as he made a show of playing along. 

“Let’s take our leave,” Volfred says, because his other option was to start swearing, and he’d already used his lifetime’s allotment of profanity in sacred spaces during their first Rite against the Chastity. 

They walk back to the blackwagon, in silence, and remove their raiments, also in silence. Volfred is not quite clear on the matter of how possible it might be for the Archjustice to listen in whenever he pleases, but his own experiences have taught him that Reading is most easily done in connection with the trappings of the Rites. 

Removed from the Shimmer Pool and divested of their raiments, Volfred has to stretch himself to get even the vaguest of Reads from his fellow Nightwings. They’re worried. He could have guessed that without the Reading, but it’s nice to know with certainty. 

He’s still breathing, very noticeably, which is probably not helping them. It is helping him, a little: air goes in, air goes out, and he’s still not screaming. 

Just when he feels like he’s got himself back under control, they turn around a bend in the mountain path and he catches sight of architecture he hasn’t seen since he was nearly a child. 

“Stop the wagon,” he says. 

Oralech stops, and Volfred rushes from the wagon before it has a chance to settle against its axels. Ti’zo cries out in baffled alarm, but Volfred can’t pay him enough heed to make out the words. The eyrie is just ahead, and-

And it’s abandoned. 

Of course it is. How long has it been- more than two hundred years? The Downside is not a kind place. It takes a lot for a community to survive down here with that kind of permanence, including a certain degree of ambulation. 

“Seriously, what the fuck?” Erisa demands, stomping up behind him. 

“There used to be Harps living in the Commonwealth,” Volfred tells her. “In eyries. Very much like this one.”

“Uh,” Erisa says, eyes darting back to where Oralech is struggling up the mountain in their footsteps. 

“There was one in capitol, even,” Volfred continues. “It was very near my childhood home. I had friends there. One day I went to visit, and it was deserted- doors kicked in, food left to rot on tables. That sort of thing.”

Oralech joins them, frowning. 

“After a few years, they all vanished. When the next Archjustice was enrobed- or was liberated, I suppose- she declared that they’d all been members of sleeper cells- the elderly, the children, the bakers and shopkeepers and factory workers and all. They were <i>eradicated</i>. I suppose it’s better that they ended up here as opposed to a mass grave.”

“There were Harps in the Commonwealth?” Oralech asks. 

“Some,” Volfred says. “It’s not a history that’s legal to teach, however.”

Ti’zo flutters over to them, hovering in the air for a moment before deciding to land on Volfred’s shoulder. <<Are you okay?>>

“My apologies,” Volfred says, both in answer to the imp’s question and for general purpose. “I don’t generally lose my temper.”

“This is you losing your temper?” Erisa demands. 

Volfred turns to stare at her. 

“You look like you need a fucking fainting couch,” Erisa continues. “Scribes, why don’t you just fucking yell or some shit? Look, there’s a tree stump.”

“What?” Volfred asks. There is a tree stump nearby, but he has no idea what, if anything, that has to do with his temper. 

“Just pull the thing up and toss it around a bit,” Erisa explains impatiently. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Why would that make me feel better?” Volfred asks, eyeing both her and the tree stump dubiously. “Why would that accomplish anything at all?”

“Because it would be like kicking dead Howlers is for me and Ti’zo,” Erisa says. “It’s _therapy_.”

“You know, there are days where I regret trying to explain the concept of therapy to you,” Oralech remarks, which mercifully spares him the need to come up with a reply of his own. 

Erisa rolls her eyes. “Fine. Don’t listen to me. Can we at least talk about the Rite, now?”

By ‘the Rite’ she clearly meant their Plan, and the role they hope General Meraki would play in it. Volfred turns to Oralech as he replies “I think we’re far enough away to prevent eavesdropping.”

“She won’t be Triesta,” Oralech says, which is as they expected. Volfred nods. “I couldn’t get all the concessions we wanted either. She couldn’t make many promises without knowing what kind of situation she’d be in upon her return to the Highwing Remnant.” That had also been anticipated, even though it was not optimal. “She said that she would do her best to hold back the Remnant from attacking the Commonwealth outright once we put our plan into action, and that she would push for them to treat with us. She also said that if that failed she would vouch for you, Erisa, so you can rest easy.”

“Thanks, I will,” Erisa replies. “It’s Volfred you need to worry about. If she decides that peaceful protest isn’t working, then she’s going to swoop in with an army behind her to take advantage of the distraction. It’ll be war. People will die. You get that, right?”

“I am aware of the potential consequences of failure,” Volfred tells her. “We’re simply going to have to work very hard to ensure that doesn’t come to pass.

Essentially, this Rite had won the revolution the grace of not having to face two threats at once. Even in the worst case scenario, where the Harps intervene, they will intervene as fellow enemies of the Commonwealth. It’s less than they might have hoped, but better than nothing. Volfred resists the urge to take another breath.

“You said it might be a year until the Rites begin again?” Volfred asks. 

Oralech nods. “An ending this early in the year generally means that we won’t see them again until after the calendar turns. I wouldn’t expect them back until secondmoon at the earliest.”

Volfred nods. “I suppose we should continue on to camp, then.”

“It’s not far,” Oralech tells him. “Within walking distance.”

That’s good to hear. Now that he knows the eyrie is abandoned, it’s difficult not to notice that most of the buildings are in disrepair, but not beyond total usability. “Is there a reason the campsite isn’t here?”

“Honestly? Most people find the bodies a bit off-putting,” Oralech says, indicating the raised platforms just beyond the first line of trees. 

It isn’t that Volfred hadn’t noticed them before. It’s that he had expected them, and therefore not thought their significance fully through.

“They would hang thuribles of very strong incense beneath the platforms,” Volfred says after a moment. “And the priests kept carrion birds to help speed the process along.” The Order of the Silver Star still kept pied crows, though the humans had taken it over and all funerary rites save for cremation had been banned for more than a century. “Still, you would not believe the stench of a sky burial in summer.”

“Yes, I would,” Oralech reminds him, and for a moment the memories of sun-baked battlefields and fetid sick tents rises up so strongly that despite the fact that the Rite season has passed, Volfred gets an impression of it from his mind. 

“Of course,” Volfred replies, bowing his head. 

“So… are we staying here, then?” Erisa asks. “Seeing as neither of us have Brighton’s weak stomach.”

<<I’m more worried that the bones will attract predators,>> Ti’zo remarks. 

“Let’s move on to where we’re certain we’ll be safe,” Volfred says. “I would like to come up here, though, to see if anything of the buildings might salvageable. My agents have been looking for some kind of centralized location to amass the supplies our people in the Commonwealth send down, and the fact that this is a place of pilgrimage would obscure the traffic. Not to mention, any buildings which could not be rescued might be broken down into tradable goods.” And he’d have the opportunity search through the graveyard for names he recognized. There should be a record of some kind hanging beneath the platforms, even if he doubts there are any thuribles to hang above it: family name and the individual members interred there. If any of them had come from the capitol, then he’d probably heard of them at one point or another. “Maybe we might make this a place with some measure of comfort again.”

“Quite the project, for our time off,” Oralech remarks. 

“Was there something else we should be doing?” Volfred asks. 

“Normally we hunt,” Erisa answers, indicating herself and Ti’zo. “Oralech scrapes food out of the local plants somehow, and every so often we head down to the Black Basin to trade with the Harps. Everything else is just a matter of not going so crazy that spending time with fucking Brighton seems like a good idea.”

“You’re leaving out the snow storms,” Oralech adds. “They don’t happen often, but if one comes upon us, the only thing for it is to wait it out in the blackwagon and hope we don’t get completely buried.”

<<The buildings are taller,>> Ti’zo points out, cocking his head to the side. <<If we can be sure that it won’t collapse, it might be a better place to wait out the storms.>>

“Did you just change your mind about staying here?” Erisa demands of the imp. 

“Not quite,” Volfred translates for her. “He just changed the conditionals.”

He thinks for a moment more, and then shakes his head. “We should make for our original destination. We can make the required decisions there.”

He starts to compose a to-do list as they make their way back to the blackwagon. 

First: Check on the structural integrity of the buildings. Oralech and Erisa would undoubtedly be of most use here, given that the latter is nearly a savant in anything even tangentially related to engineering, and the former had a very keen instinct for what was sturdy cover after twenty-odd years at the Bloodborder. He and Ti’zo wouldn’t be completely without use, however. Ti’zo could flutter up two or three stories and report back anything useful; Volfred has turned out to have a talent for bracing things. 

Second: Determine which buildings could be utilized and which were better off demolished. They could use at least some of the lumber and stone from otherwise unsalvageable buildings themselves for repairs, and there might very well be more materials laying around that might be of use. If there were metal nails, Erisa would undoubtedly be able to melt them down and do something creative with the slag. As for any buildings they were able to rescue- finding on that could shelter them during a storm would be of the highest priority. If it could double as a storehouse, that would be fine, at least to start with. It would be preferable to have a seperate storehouse, and perhaps a few other amenities. A safehouse for weary agents to rest in a bed every once and awhile. A sick house where injuries might be tended. Perhaps they could even build some kind of forge for Erisa to do her work in. 

Third: Look for Amarati Lors.

It’s been a very long time since that’s been on his list. He’d stopped a few days after the eyrie had been emptied. It was obvious that she’d gone forever. 

He’d been young, and more than a little naive. The fact that the Commonwealth, though he had already begun to dislike it immensely, could have destroyed so many lives overnight had shocked him. 

He was a bit beyond shock by now. Though, he probably would have said that before learning of how the Archjustices were selected, so perhaps he should not be so final about it.

“Penny for your plot?” Oralech asks him, which brings him to the fourth item on his list rather neatly.

“I was just thinking,” Volfred says. “If we are able to establish a base in the eyrie, then food will undoubtedly be amongst the supplies they bring. That will free up some time.”

Gathering food took up an  _ astounding _ amount of their time: hours each day for what might amount to little more than a pitiful collection of roots, grubs, and fungus, with perhaps a gutter crab thrown in for good measure. Even though Volfred had very quickly developed the habit of root-feeding whenever possible to ease the burden on them, it was sometimes all they could do to hold skin and soul together. 

“It will,” Oralech agrees cautiously. “Though I think the construction work might fill most of it.”

“That’s certainly true,” Volfred replies. “But I thought I should reiterate my earlier offer of teaching you to read, as well.”

Oralech regards him for a moment. “Did Brighton say something or did Erisa give something away?” he asks. 

“The latter,” Volfred admits. “But that’s not the only reason. I do miss teaching, and I do think that there would be benefits to you as well, beyond a certain peace of mind.”

“Oh?”

“Writing makes the transmission of information easier,” Volfred said, with a significant look towards Oralech’s sketchbook, which was more than half-filled with medicinal plants and tutorials for various medical procedures. He waits for Oralech’s nod of comprehension before continuing. “And it would mean that we would not have to rely on my agents in order to communicate after your liberation.”

“Well,” Oralech says, smiling a little. “You certainly craft a persuasive argument. How about you Erisa?”

“I’m not writing you sex mail,” Erisa tells him, which is tantamount to a  _ yes _ .

“Perish the thought,” Volfred says. “And you, Ti’zo?”

<<Me?>>

“Yes, you,” Volfred says. “If Ha’ub could learn to read and write, then there’s no reason why you could not.”

<<I’d like that,>> Ti’zo replies.

With their course decided upon, they set off to their next campsite. It will be a long time before the Rites begin anew, but they have plenty to occupy themselves with.


End file.
